He left the navy and found work on a merchant ship running between Scotland and the West Indies. Coming back from a voyage to Jamaica, the ship’s captain and mate both died, and John Paul, though still a mere boy, sailed the ship home. So he became a captain before he was twenty. In those days, shipmasters treated their men roughly, and once young Captain Paul had to flog the ship’s carpenter. The man died some time afterward of fever, and, to spite the young shipmaster, he claimed that he had been fatally injured by John Paul’s cruelty. After that, on another voyage, the sailors mutinied or turned against their captain, and tried to kill him. In self-defense the young master knocked the leader down stairs and he died of the fall. The next time John Paul was heard from, he was living in America with a wealthy man named Jones. It was just at the beginning of the War for Independence, and the young Scotchman was so in love with liberty and the new country that he decided to become an American. In doing this he took the name of his new-found friend Jones. Instead of John Paul, the British subject, he now called himself Paul Jones, American. He went to the Congress in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, in May, 1775, to offer his services. He was promptly given command of several ships to defend the colonies against Great Britain. The next year the Declaration of Independence was signed. On the 14th of June, 1777, the Congress appointed him to the command of the American ship-of-war, _Ranger_. On the same day the Congress adopted a flag and made this record: “_Resolved_, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, and that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” Captain Paul Jones had a silk flag made at once and raised it on the _Ranger_, on the first birthday of the United States, July 4th, 1777. The first voyage of this ship was to France, and the young United States captain announced to the French admiral, in the harbor he was about to enter, that he would expect the French fleet to salute the new American flag. After some delay, the French officer consented and the _Ranger_ sailed into port between two rows of French ships-of-war, which had French flags flying, and French sailors and soldiers manning the yardarms, and cannon booming all along the line, in honor of the Stars and Stripes. That was a great day for the United States, for this was the first time a foreign kingdom recognized the new republic of America.